Windy City

Oh elusive spring, we know you will come.  We were just hoping you'd come along in time for us to take a break from school with you.  So far, not so much. 

 Here is a glimpse at our wishful thinking garden.  Also known as our temporary garden and until yesterday termed our "awkward garden" by our son.  Before our trip to Texas Hannah came home with a prized cup of dirt (carefully sealed in a ziplock bag by her very thoughtful teacher) in which she had lovingly planted several seeds.  She informed us that one would be a Mammoth Sunflower which can grow to eleven feet tall and the other would be beans.

The same friends who cared for our family pet cared also for Hannah's cup of dirt while we were in Texas.  Up until then the cup had been probably over-loved by its owner.  Of course we did not forget to pick Max up the morning after we arrived, but we did manage to forget the little cup.  This caused our Hannah much distress, especially when her brother came home that afternoon with a cabbage plant that needed to be planted "right away or else it will die!"  The next day we picked up the cup of dirt, which was now a cup of seedlings much to the delight of all three children. 

Later that week (not so right away), I made the transfer of all of our little plants into the window boxes we brought back from Belgium.  We never grew a garden in Belgium.  We have never really grown much of anything.  We did have a little flower garden at our last Michigan house, but this is our first attempt at growing anything edible.  I'm hoping the children keep their hopes low.

In our garage a little garden box is awaiting assembly and we are all waiting on better weather in which to assemble it.

Yesterday we added a few plants to make our garden less "awkward"--as apparently a garden consisting of one cabbage plant, one mammoth sunflower plant and two bean sprouts seems to be.  We also have a few more packages of seeds--also waiting on more gardening friendly weather.

I wish I had grabbed the camera yesterday to capture Hannah squatting next to the little garden carefully inspecting each plant.  Some plants came with little markers to identify them.  Some did not.

Hannah quickly remedied that problem with some help from her daddy.  Unfortunately, the wind tried to demolish the little plants with her little markers during the night.  This afternoon I heard her telling her dad that she was so sad that one of her little sunflowers "didn't make it".  I was beginning to wonder if we might need to have a small funeral service--she was so sad.

So spring break has begun.  In this case, it seems to mean we are taking a break from spring--there is no snow and it doesn't exactly feel like winter out there, but spring?  Not really.

We do have some plans to keep us busy and we will be coloring Easter eggs for the first time in four years.  It looks like the Easter Bunny might have to hide the eggs inside--so strange for a Texas kid, but not so strange for Michigan ones.  We mostly had indoor egg hunts in Belgium if at all.  We were not exactly consistent with the commercial side of celebrating Easter in Belgium and not even really with celebrating Easter at church.  We did a lot of traveling around Easter while living there.  Four years ago, we celebrated here without our dad and it was snowing.  Three years ago we had Nana & Papa visiting.  Two years ago we were saved by our friends in England with access to the military base.  And one year ago, we were getting ready to come back here.

It was almost a year ago exactly that a volcano threatened to change our plans and changed a lot of goodbyes to friends. Surprisingly, I haven't been reflecting all that much on our one year back.  It feels like I've done that all along the way and we're all okay.  We've had our ups and downs.  We're back "home", but family is still far enough away that we can't see them as often as we'd like.  The difference here is that we're more alone in that.  Something I realized today when I suggested to a friend that we might like to invite our small group from church over for an egg hunt on Easter Sunday.  Most of our small group will be spending the day with their families--something I just honestly didn't think about until she told me her plans.  We'll find our groove and our traditions, but at the moment we just don't have them.  The first year back is an adjustment along with all of the firsts that come that year.

On a much more cheerful note, I finally uploaded the rest of the pictures from our trip.  Here is the gang waiting for a buffet dinner donning their complimentary wolf ears.  Clearly Caroline and Sarah were not feeling 100%.

Sarah is looking over my shoulder at the moment (as she serves me tea, coffee and cake from her serving tray) and reminded me that Cooper was "so funny when he said, 'AROOOOOO' like a wolf".  He really is just too cute.

And this one.  Yes, I know she looks so much like her dad and his sisters, but here it is like a time machine has taken me back to when we visited Kat in California when she and Jay were just about this age.  Such cuteness!

More cuteness.

 Three little vampire children.  Goes nicely with the Twilight theme from when Cooper pulled out the hotel Bible and  "read" to Nana about werewolves.

There was an impromptu card game back in the room.

The outdoor pool water was freezing, but being out in the sunshine was too hard to resist.  Even Sarah braved the cold water for a few minutes in spite of feeling so yucky.

Seems so hard to believe that just two weeks ago we were running around in bathing suits, shorts and flip flops.  Now we're back to sweaters, coats and boots--just checked and there is now a winter weather advisory.  Yes, 1-2 inches of wet snow appears to be headed our way overnight.  Fun times.  At least the wind is supposed to stop after today.  Sigh.

Off to rescue our awkward garden.